Don’t let anybody tell you different.

I’m sure you guys remember Reid Faylor, runner-up to our first ever National College Comedy Competition. Well, I’ll have you know that he just won The Funniest Person in Cincinnati Contest last week.

Production is busy cutting out and prepping Reid’s winngiest performance from last Wednesday at the finals, but until then, please to enjoy his semi-final performance from three weeks ago at Go Bananas.

I’ll just leave you with this.
Dreams really do come true.

Posted: August 19th, 2008 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: none

Hot off the presses! We’ve been informed that Laurence Fishburne is indeed joining the cast of CSI! Our own Point/Counterpoint discussed this a few weeks ago.  Check out our groovy debate here.  I win! I win!

Posted: August 18th, 2008 under Point/Counterpoint, Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 1

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has a special place in my heart. My high school years were my teen-angst-I-want-to-be-a-filmmaker-and-the-educational-institution-is-totally-holding-me-back-from-my-dreams (mooching free drinks from open bars at film festivals) phase. During this time, I was perpetually writing my magnum opus script that would make me a Sundance darling. And by perpetually writing, I mean perpetually telling people I was writing it. People would ask me what it would be about, and I would murmur, “it’s like Ferris Bueller, but darker,” which basically meant the entire film was gonna be about me brooding, cutting class, and talking about “living life”.

All angst aside, my hands down favorite scene in the movie was the immortal Von Steuben Day parade where Matthew Broderick, in probably the absolute peak of his career jumps on a float, starts lip syncing to The Beatles’ Twist and Shout, and incites the crowd to perform acts of mass exuberance. To me, it was pure, absolute joy to behold. I spent so many late afternoons mimicking that scene, pretending that I was indeed Ferris Bueller pretending to be Abe Froman, Sausage King of Chicago.

So thanks to the Comedy Central Insider, I’ve learned that on September 6th (two days after my birthday, natch) artists are recreating the iconic parade scene from Ferris Bueller’s day off in NYC! Happy birthday, indeed.

The protocol goes for the event goes:

1. Pick a character from the clip.

2. Show up to the parade dressed like them.

3. Start singing and dancing along like it’s 1986 when their Ferris float approaches. (This is the most important step: to get everybody dancing!!)

I won’t be there, because I live in California, and will be laser tagging, but this feels like the best inadvertent birthday ever received. I excitedly await for the post-parade footage. For more information, check out the Project Bueller Tumblr or the Craigslist Ad for the event!

My question would be, who would you dress up as from the parade?

Posted: August 18th, 2008 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: none

Holy Jesus, it’s good to be back from beyond the pale of food poisoning. Did you guys miss me? Wait, don’t answer that. I’ll spare you the deets, but I will tell you this, last week was the week that I decided for the sixth time to try and get the shambles of my life back together. You know, eat better, do some push-ups, think more positive, blah blah blah. So I try to eat a vaguely healthy meal at Subway, and projectile vomit for a week was my reward. I should go back to my deep-fried bacon wrapped Twinkies. They’ll NEVER break my heart. Just explode it.

In other news, I definitely want to thank Briana so much for taking the reins on this ship of blogging. Baby, I’m back!

PS: I never really even liked Subway THAT much to begin with. Subway to me is settling, kind of like marrying the first person to give you any time of day because you’re afraid you’re gonna die alone, or be hungry for lunch. One in the same really.

Posted: August 18th, 2008 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 1

Generally, NBC sucks at pretty much all news-type broadcasting. Specifically, the 2008 Summer Olympic coverage, from what I’ve seen, is atrocious. And the Olympics could be such a great chance for the US to show that we can produce quality content with global appeal.

Maybe it’s the fact that most of the coverage is heavy on either American athletes or athletes with well known international gossip stories. Or maybe its the seemingly endless commercial breaks. No - these things should have been expected, are in fact part of a long history of Olympic coverage aesthetics. I think what I’m most annoyed by are the self-important “Chinese Cultural” pieces that are peppered throughout the event coverage. Perhaps I should have expected this? Well, I didn’t.

Bob Costas & Mary Carillo Suck. Why?

Posted: August 15th, 2008 under Reviews, Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 3

Greetings and Salutations, Rooftopblog fans! In honor of Paolo, our fearless Blog leader, who will never again eat Subway due to a two day food poisoning outage, we would like to formally declare that we’ve reached our 100th post! And for you, our faithful readers, we give you a new feature.

Overheard at Rooftop.
Occasionally, we find ourselves saying hilarious things on accident. And we sometimes think they’re so funny that we feel inclined to share them with you.

EmilyH: How do you spell Syphilis?
Annie & Briana (simultaneous): S-Y-P-H-I-L-I-S
Maureen: Can you tell me the origin?
Briana: My friend Mike.

Happy 100th Blog Post, RooftopComedy Bloggers and fans! And Paolo? Gatorade, saltines and lots of cable TV. Get better soon, we’re lost without you!

Posted: August 14th, 2008 under Cool stuff from RooftopComedy, Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: none

Protesters gathered at the premiere of Tropic Thunder yesterday. Not just any kind of protesters. But a special kind of protesters. What? Too soon? Let me back up.

Tropic Thunder, the latest Ben Stiller vehicle, may or may not (probably not) dethrone Dark Knight at the top of this week’s box office heap. This parody of war films and the studio system, starring Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr, incited the ire of the mentality disabled with their meta film-within-a-film “Simple Jack”, complete with the tag line, “Once upon a time…there was a retard.”

Used to flesh out the Tropic Thunder universe, and to subvert the idea of actors playing mentality disabled people in a hunt for Oscar nominations, (I Am Sam, I am looking at you) mentality disabled advocate Patricia Bauer didn’t take too kindly to this, demanding that “Paramount/DreamWorks should pull all scenes and clips that include Ben Stiller’s portrayal of Simple Jack from the movie, DVD, trailers, promotional material and merchandising”. It should be noted that Paramount did take down the fake site for “Simple Jack”, but have stated that “no changes or cuts to the film will be made.”

Allow me to step onto my high hobby horse of haughty opinion, after the jump.

Posted: August 12th, 2008 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 2

Bernie Mac passed away on Saturday in a Chicago area hospital due to complications from pneumonia. We’ll miss you.

Also, Isaac Hayes? He’s one bad mother…shut your mouth.

Posted: August 11th, 2008 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 2

And not because of the whole China/Tibet thing. Whatever, some giant media conglomerate paid a shitload of money to gain exclusive rights to the Olympic broadcast so we can watch some global sports competition. But, really? Shooting and Table Tennis? The only way I would watch those is if the athletes were required to drink shots of whiskey for the entire hour before they compete so there’s an actual challenge involved.

If you find that you’re missing the funny in all that Olympic pomp and circumstance, you should check out our newest comedy buddy, elbow macaroni. Jon Darcel is a one-man show of awesomeness and he’s just launched a new website! He’s got a great open mic storyline that you should check out.

Starting next Monday, his crazy characters will be making an appearance on ye olde Rooftopblog every week!

So dig into the storylines today and check out his site.  He’s got some sweet stuff for sale and 30% of the proceeds are going to be donated to the YWCA of Seattle. How rad is that?

I’m just sayin’, his Olympic Gold comic from today is pure comedic genius.

Posted: August 8th, 2008 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff, elbow macaroni.
Comments: 1

Last night Iliza Shlesinger was announced as the first female (and sixth overall) winner of NBC’s Last Comic Standing.   Along with a cash prize, development deal, and a new car, Iliza will join a few of the other finalists on a nationwide tour.  Hopefully this will be a perfect jump start to take her to superstar-dome.

As a nod to female comics everywhere, here is one of my favorite clips from Maria Bamford discussing women comics:

Posted: August 8th, 2008 under Reviews, Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: none